And you all know that Louis Armstrong, Teddy Wilson, and Mildred Bailey appeared, with the Goodman Quintet being beamed in from the other coast.

When I bid on and won that photograph of Billie and Sidney on eBay, it came with a small rectangular strip of yellowed paper taped to its back, which read

THE THRUSH AND THE SKINMAN

“Two top jive artists are shown at the Esquire All-American jazz concert, held at the Metropolitan Opera House on January 18th. Billie Holliday does the vocalizing as drummer boy Sid Catlett pounds the skins.”

I am nostalgic about 1944 music, but I am glad that no one feels compelled to write that way anymore. Incidentally, when I looked online to see where this picture might have appeared — searching for THRUSH and SKINMAN — I got a whole host of entries about candida, male and female yeast infections. Mmmmmmm.

My unanswered and unanswerable question about the photograph has to do with it being a posed, rather than candid shot. Notice that neither of the two participants is in motion; there is no blur. So. Did the photographer say to the two of them presumably before or after the concert, “Billie, Miss Holiday. Could you come over here? We need a shot of you and Sidney — how do you people say it — giving each other . . . some skin?” And for those who like metaphysics, which one put out a hand first for this hip charade? I know the photograph is in some ways fake, but the emotions behind it are not.

P.S. If you’re going to lift the photographic image for use on your own site, be my guest. I wouldn’t disfigure it with a watermark . . . but real gents and ladies also write, “Photo courtesy of JAZZ LIVES.” Thanks.

The ebullient woman shining her light in the photograph, Banu Gibson, is a superb singer who doesn’t get the credit she deserves as a singer.

If you have no idea of what she sounds like, here, take a taste:

Banu, Bucky, and Berlin — endearing adult music, no tricks.

I think Banu is undervalued because she is so powerfully distracting as an entertainer, and this is a compliment. We hear the wicked comic ad-libs, we see the flashing eyes, we admire the dance steps, we are entranced by the Show she puts on (that, too, is a good thing) but I think we don’t always hear her fine voice as we should — her warm timbre, her dramatic expression, her phrasing, her intuitive good taste, her swing.

But with her new CD, we have a chance to hear her, deeply. That CD, BY MYSELF, is delightfully swinging, at times poignant. The song list is a perceptive assortment of songs that haven’t been overdone: BY MYSELF / MEET ME WHERE THEY PLAY THE BLUES / ILL WIND / THE MOON GOT IN MY EYES – MOONRAY / WAITIN’ FOR THE TRAIN TO COME IN / YOU LET ME DOWN / UNTIL THE REAL THING COMES ALONG / THEY SAY / STOP THE SUN, STOP THE MOON (MY MAN’S GONE) / MY BUDDY / NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS / OH! LOOK AT ME NOW / DAYTON, OHIO – 1903 / OUR LOVE ROLLS ON / LIFE IS JUST A BOWL OF CHERRIES. And Banu’s wonderfully empathic band is Larry Scala, guitar; Ed Wise, string bass; Rex Gregory, tenor sax and clarinet; Tom McDermott, piano on DAYTON and OUR LOVE.

Banu is a great connoisseur of songs, with a wide range of under-exposed great ones, as opposed to the two dozen that many singers favor. I’ve only heard her in performance a few times, but when she announces the next song, I always think, “Wow! How splendid! She knows that one!” rather than thinking, “Not another MY FUNNY VALENTINE or GOD BLESS THE CHILD, please, please.”

Song-scholars will notice that a number of these songs have sad lyrics, but this is not a mopey or maudlin disc. Every performance has its own sweet motion, an engaging bounce, as the musicians explore the great veldt of Medium Tempo.

Although a handful of songs on this disc are associated with other singers — Mildred Bailey, Lee Wiley, and Billie Holiday — BY MYSELF is not in a tribute to any of those great foremothers, nor is there any ill-starred attempt to recapture those recorded performances. If Rex and Larry happen to sound a little like Pres and Charlie Christian on these sides, that is a wonderful side-effect, but no one’s been asked to pretend it’s 1937 and John Hammond is in the studio. Everyone swings gently — the shared goal, with no artificial ingredients.

The disc is not narrow in its conception, either. Banu and the band approach each song as a separate dramatic playlet with its own mood, tempo, and feeling. It’s one of those rare and delicious discs where the emotions are not only intense but fully realized. I could not listen to it all in one sitting — not because it bored me, but because I felt full of sensations after a few tracks, and few CDs are so quietly arresting. Each song is treated tenderly and attentively, and although I suspect the underlying theme of this disc is deeper than “Hey, I haven’t made a CD in a few years and here are some songs I like,” we’re not whacked over the head with one emotion. Rather, it’s as if Banu wanted us to consider the whole spectrum of intimate personal relationships. She and her band have deep true stories to tell, but you have to figure out what they are, performance by performance.

Incidentally, I am snobbish, narrow, hard to please (ask people who have heard me discuss what I do and don’t like) but I fell in love with this disc in the first twenty or so seconds of BY MYSELF, which is a rubato duet between Banu and Larry Scala. (When is the world going to wake up about Scala? Come ON, now! But I digress.) Her diction is remarkable; her solo swing a model, and her voice is rich and full of feeling. Her sweet vibrato is so warm: there’s nothing mechanical in her delivery and her superb phrasing: the second variation on the theme is never a clone of the first. (Hear her variations on “He made a toy of romance!” in MOONRAY: nothing that a lesser artist could do or what have envisioned.) By the way, the Gregory-Scala-Wise swing machine (with two interludes from McDermott) is perfectly lyrical and swinging — Basie plus Lester with Basie taking a smoke break in the hall, or perhaps Skeeter Best / Oscar Pettiford / Lucky Thompson if you prefer. On many singer-plus-band sessions, the disparity between one and the other is sharp, so the listener waits through the instrumental interlude for the Singer to come back, or vice versa. Here, every note seems right, and the result is very affecting.

In the ideal world, Banu and her band would be touring the world — giving concerts and clinics and workshops — and I would hear this music from other cars’ radios when we were at red lights. But until this happens, I commend this splendidly-recorded disc to you: the emotional density of a great volume of short stories combined with the elation of a book of coupons to your favorite ice-cream shoppe. BY MYSELF — after many listenings — seems a series of gems. You can buy it here. You will rejoice.

Singers who perform in public — as they must — have singular obstacles to face in performance. Even though the ringing cash register is now a museum piece, there are so many extraneous sounds to surmount even when the audience is properly quiet and (imagine this!) everyone’s smartphone is shut off. Dishes and glasses clink; the waitstaff murmurs details of the specials, offers a dessert menu, presents the bill. The presumed answer to this is amplification, which can make a quiet sound audible at the back of the room, but in the process coarsens every nuance.

A CD session recorded in a studio has its own set of obstacles: the creative artist may be restricted to one small space, may be burdened with headphones and be banished into a booth . . . but we don’t see these travails, and the sound we hear through our speakers is a kinder representation of the human voice.

Hence, this delightful surprise (recorded by Malcolm Addey, so you can imagine the clear, accurate sound) in 2015:

In case you can’t read the back cover, the songs are I Walk a Little Faster / Wouldn’t It Be Loverly / Feel Like Makin’ Love / Lets Go Live In a Lighthouse / Cycling Along With You / Inside a Silent Tear / My Blue Heaven / A O Zora / You Turned the Tables On Me / Fly Me To The Moon / You Wanna Bet / The Brooklyn Bridge / The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.

And the Orchestra with Vocal Refrain is Daryl, piano and vocals, with Harvie S, string bass, on tracks 2 and 10. It’s a delightfully old-fashioned CD: twelve tracks, fifty minutes, but no need to turn it over.

From the start, it’s a wonderful chance to hear Daryl — “her ownself” — as we might say in the Middle West a century ago. She is of course her own splendid accompanist, and her two selves never get in each other’s way. And I would direct some pianists who revere Tatum as their model to her spare, pointed accompaniment.

Her voice is the true delight here. Daryl sounds so much like herself, and is I think instantly recognizable, although one may call to mind Mildred Bailey, Blossom Dearie, and Dave Frishberg as musical colleagues and inspirations. I think she’s been undervalued because of what sounds (to the casual listener) like girlish charm, a high sweet voice with a conversational, sometimes wry delivery. But once the listener is into this CD for more than a chorus, the absence of other instrumentalists allows us to hear emotional depth beneath the apparent light-heartedness. This isn’t to say that the disc veers towards the dark or maudlin, but there is a true adult sensibility that makes even the most familiar material shine as if beautifully polished and lit. And even if you think you know how Daryl sings and plays, I submit that this CD is her masterpiece to date, sending us gentle immediacy of the most rare kind.

It’s a wonderful one-woman show, with nothing to excess, and a CD I’d like to send to many singers to show ’em how it can be done.

Matters of finance! If you send Daryl an email here, and say the magic words, “I’d like to buy MY BLUE HEAVEN,” her staff will help you do just that. You can also ask for an autographed copy. For now, checks only: $20 plus $ for shipping. You can also browse around her site to learn about upcoming gigs, to read her biography, see pictures, and more. I’m amused and pleased that four of the five videos are mine.

Musicians’ relations to their material — whether they choose it or someone else does — are complex.

For some, “the material is immaterial,” which means “I will have a good time playing or singing whatever song is placed in front of me, and I will make it my own.” In this category, I think of Louis, Lips Page, Fats Waller, Mildred Bailey, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Jimmy Rushing, and many others. Other musicians like the comfort of the familiar: I think of Jack Teagarden, whose many versions of BASIN STREET BLUES are often full of small delightful surprises. Yet the familiar can be a trap, encouraging some musicians to “phone it in” or “go through the motions.”

The Blessed Eddie Condon exists by himself in those categories. Because so much of his musical life was spent outside of the recording studio, on bandstands and in concert halls, there might appear to be a sameness in his discography, with multiple versions of IMPROMPTU ENSEMBLE — but that “song” was simply a beautiful structure within which his brilliant strolling players could express themselves to the utmost. Eddie cared very deeply for and about good songs, material that hadn’t been done to death. That is why (without looking at the discography) you will find few versions of INDIANA, SAINT JAMES INFIRMARY, and none of the SAINTS. And when he was working with the Blessed Milton Gabler — either for Commodore or Decca or World Transcriptions — the two men shared a love of melodic material. I don’t know who led the way, but I suspect that Eddie, who remembered songs, might have suggested to Milt a particular favorite of his childhood or the early Twenties: thus, DANCING FOOL; DON’T LEAVE ME, DADDY; IDA; OH, KATHARINA, and this lovely oddity:

How did this song come to be? It’s not explicitly a war song — the premise is simply that a pretty Dutch girl is waiting for the singer, and implicitly in the premise is that the singer will be kissed seriously when he shows up. Were the fellows in the Brill Building making jokes about “two lips” when someone said, “Hey, let’s write a Dutch song!” Was the “beside me / Zuider Zee” rhyme irresistible? But it has a forward-looking melody for 1915, thanks to Whiting (I can hear the Wolverines playing this, in my mind) and the lyrics are of their time but not ponderously so.

Here is a contemporary version — not the most famous one by Henry Burr, but a good recording, one I would happily play for a listener insistent that music began with electrical recording or even later:

When Eddie and Milt decided to record this song for Decca, thirty-two years later, it was not a spur-of-the-moment decision. It wasn’t LADY BE GOOD or RIVERBOAT SHUFFLE, and one hears an arrangement that (I think) was done by Bobby Hackett, and done prior to the date. Who could go wrong with Jack Teagarden singing?

Although that is a very short recording, it is full of pleasures: Jack’s trombone lazily ornamenting the melody over the four-horn statement of the theme; Bushkin, immediately identifiable, modulating for Jack’s vocal, with a Wettling accent to encourage everyone; Jack’s gorgeous voice — slightly nasal, Bing meets Louis in Texas, perhaps, streamlined but deeply earnest (with a different horn background — scored obbligati for four horns with Bushkin brightly commenting — beneath him); a Hucko half-chorus, sounding sweetly as if Bud were in the studio; Jack taking the last sixteen bars, vocally, with a scored phrase to finish it all out. The only thing “wrong” with that record is that it could have had one more chorus and still been a perfectly respectable 10″ 78.

What impresses me at this distance of nearly fifty years is how musical it all is. It doesn’t need to parade its “improvisatory” credentials: “We’re hot jazzmen and singers, you know.” The Condon-Gabler world didn’t always want to read from scores, but the musicians were perfectly capable of doing so, and the scored passages are expertly played. I also imagine someone tuning in the radio — AM, of course, in 1947 — hearing this new Decca waxing, a new platter, and thinking, “That’s a great record!” Which it was and is.

Why am I suddenly delving in to such obscurities? Well, no record that has Eddie Condon on it is unworthy; the same goes for the rest of the personnel, especially Mister Teagarden . . . and I have been listening to these overlooked Decca sessions — in glowing sound, with many unissued alternates — from the new Mosaic Eddie Condon / Bud Freeman set, which I reviewed here. Ecstatically.

I know this Mosaic set might get overshadowed by the latest glorious gift, the Lester Young effusion, and the Condon / Freeman one is already OLD, having come out in mid-2015, but when it’s sold out, don’t ring my buzzer and ask me to burn you copies of discs seven and eight. You’ve been warned.

“Too good to ignore,” said Eddie Condon. He didn’t live long enough to savor this trio — Dawn Lambeth, vocals; Ray Skjelbred, piano; Marc Caparone, cornet — but I feel his approving glance. They appeared last November at the San Diego Jazz Fest (thanks to Hal Smith and Paul Daspit for such a marvel) and the music was glorious. But you don’t have to take my word for it.

A cyber-friend and reader of JAZZ LIVES sent me the link to the Yonkers, New York auction house COHASCO, INC., that is running an auction of jazz memorabilia ending January 5, 2016. Much of the paper ephemera was new to me, and my friend thought it would be of interest to JAZZ LIVES’ readers. So I am offering the information and the beautiful pictures here. Full disclosure: I’m doing this for the usual reasons — interest rather than reimbursement — in case you needed to know.

The items are being offered as a collection: individual treasures are not available for bid. And there’s been a good deal of interest in it already.

Here are three pictures that should speak louder than words:

and

and

The consignor (who wishes to remain anonymous) has written these words, which should reverberate with many of us:

People collect all types of objects, from thimbles to stamps, to paintings and cars. I attribute my appreciation of swing and big band music to my parents. While other kids my age were enamored with the Beatles, I watched my dad carefully place a record player stylus down upon an old 78 rpm record and soon became captivated by the sounds of Harry James, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey and other orchestras of the time. As I grew older, I realized that the melodies I enjoyed were truly the soundtrack to another era. As a record and memorabilia collector, the swing and big band music of the 1930’s and 40’s struck such a chord in the psyche, that collecting and preserving the ephemera of that era was a natural extension of my admiration for the music. If I look at a ticket stub for a Benny Goodman concert, I suddenly hear Gene Krupa drumming the memorable beat of Sing, Sing, Sing, followed by Goodman’s sweet clarinet–like a sound wave time machine pulling me straight into the past. If I hold a Glenn Miller program I hear Miller’s theme song, Moonlight Serenade and in my mind’s eye, I see a newsreel projecting WWII soldiers coming home, marching back from victory and embracing wives and family. To me, collecting is about more than the ephemera itself, its a way to pay homage to not only the musicians, but to the “greatest generation.”

And here are some practical details about the collection. It was “compiled over decades by an impassioned musicologist,” and its focus is on the Thirties and Forties, although the 235 vintage items are dated 1926-1966.

From Basie to Ellington, Goodman to Miller, the collection offers a wide panorama of the cultural artifacts underpinning the era. The assemblage includes concert ticket stubs, show programs, handbills, record store posters, nightclub souvenirs, period autographs, lobby cards, movie stills, postcards, fan and record industry magazines, sheet music, an oversize RKO theatre owners’ advertising book for the 1942 sensation “Syncopation,” starring Charlie Barnet, Benny Goodman, Harry James, Gene Krupa, et al, and curiosa such as novelty promotional pieces. Broad representation is present of both the bands and their individual artists, male and female, instrumental and vocal – a near who’s-who of jazz.

Capturing the golden era of Big Bands, some of the historic nights – and days – represented are 1937’s Benny Goodman vs. Chick Webb Battle of Swing, 1954’s landmark Festival of Modern American Jazz, Glenn Miller at CBS Radio Theatre, and many, many more. Additional venues represented include the Apollo (an early Louis Armstrong appearance), the Capital, Paramount, and Roxy Theatres, the Famous Door, Palomar Ballroom, Savoy Ballroom, Steel Pier, and others.

Much of the unsigned ephemera is very scarce – often magnitudes more so than signed material – and found only by chance. Duplicating such a collection would take many years and inordinate labor. The archive offers a wealth of materials, themes, and graphic choices for an all-encompassing display – or rotating exhibitions in a club, restaurant, performance space, academic music department, or favorite room of a home or office. Color montages on website and by e-mail. Request free detailed prospectus.

The pre-auction estimate is $5400 – $6500. Bids are accepted up to January 5, 2016, 8:00 P.M. E.D.T. All items are fully described on their website, cohascodpc.com. A 136-page printed catalogue is available by mail, while supplies last.”